Laparoscopic surgery also referred as minimally invasive surgery, bandaid surgery, keyhole surgery is commonly and widely accepted method of doing surgical procedures. Generally, these laparoscopic surgical procedures make use of one or more small incisions to access internal tissues, often through a cannula, trocar, or other surgical device. The popularity of laparoscopic procedure facilitated surgeons to perform complex surgeries with number of advantages to the patient such as less complication, less blood loss, smaller incisions, shorter recovering time and overall low cost.
Unfortunately, many surgical procedures involving removal of relatively, large masses of tissue, for example, removal of uterus, fibroid, or the like are difficult to accomplish through laparoscopic cannulas or other surgical devices. Removing such large tissue masses laparoscopically through a small access lumen is fairly difficult and time consuming.
Specialized devices have lately developed to sever large tissue masses into segments, which are more easily removed using laparoscopic surgery. These devices generally include a rotating tube having a sharpened distal end which extends through a fixed outer tube. This sharpened end is inserted into the patient through a cannula, or directly through an incision. The surgeon inserts a forceps through the rotating tube. Grasping the large mass of tissue to be removed, the surgeon pulls the tissue up into the tube, so that the rotating edge severs the grasped portion from the large mass. The size of the severed tissue is generally limited by the outline of the rotating edge, so that the surgeon can continue to pull the severed tissue out of the patient through the rotating tube. By repeating the grasping and severing procedure, surgeons can remove relatively large masses of tissue quite quickly. As the large tissue mass is removed in small, individually grasped morcels, these devices are often referred to as “morcellators”.
Morcellators are either single use disposable or reusable. However, the reusable morcellators carry of risk of cross infection from one patient to another if not sterilized properly. In addition, there are no specific tests or measures to ensure 100% sterility of these re-sterilized devices. Also, sterilizing these devices is fairly time consuming and so expensive.
Single use disposable morcellators are costly as whole morcellator is required to be disposed after surgery. Disposing off large amount of plastic and metal also leads to environmental pollution, wastage and significant cost put pressure on the healthcare system.
In the light of the above, it would be desirable to provide improved and cost-effective methods and devices for severing and removing tissue from a patient's body.